


Salvation

by Vertiga



Series: Flynt Coal the Cat [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Animal Death, Cats, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Gun Violence, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Torture, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4174635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vertiga/pseuds/Vertiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan finds a kitten in a pile of garbage, and the Fake AH Crew changes forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted in pieces submitted to Ryanthepowerbottomguy on tumblr. It has now been reworked to make it a whole fic. It is part of a series with Resurrection, which has also undergone minor edits.

Ryan was hiding in a filthy alley, other people’s blood on his jacket and his hands, crouched in a pile of garbage, hoping the cops would pass him by if he stayed still and quiet. Already on high alert, he jerked his head to the side so fast it almost hurt when he heard a squeak and the pile of wet newspaper by his leg started moving. He watched it, assuming that there was a rat underneath, but he already suspected that the noise wasn’t right. He was familiar with rats.

After a minute of rustling, a tiny kitten poked its head out of the paper, black fur filthy and wet, and crawled towards Ryan, making sad little peeping noises. It seemed desperate for warmth, shivering and trying its best to cuddle close to Ryan’s heat.

Ryan shifted the newspaper aside, and felt his heart sink at the sight of two more kittens underneath. A single touch confirmed that they were so cold and still that there was nothing left of them but bones. The living kitten continued to cry and try to climb on his jean-clad knee. Ryan would swear forever that he picked it up to keep it quiet, though it could never have been loud enough to attract the cops. The honest answer was that the desperate sounds were breaking Ryan’s heart.

The kitten was shaking when he picked it up, far too young to be left on its own, and it didn’t fight him, just curled up in his hands, sniffing at the drying blood. A tiny, rough tongue sneaked out and licked his thumb, and Ryan had no chance of leaving the animal behind after that.

He tucked the trembling kitten into the neck of his jacket, shuddering at the touch of cold, wet fur against his throat. He stayed hidden in the garbage, still and silent, and the kitten slowly stopped feeling so cold against his skin. Eventually, the faintest rumbling purr exuded from his jacket, and he couldn’t help but smile to hear it. As soon as he felt safe, he pulled off his mask and headed out into the streets, trusting the dark to keep his bloody clothes invisible.

The penthouse was a good two miles away, but jacking a car seemed like asking for trouble with the cops still riled up like a kicked hornets nest. He didn’t resent the walk - movement meant body heat, and he wanted the kitten to be as warm as possible. By the time he made it home, the kitten was warm and dry, poking its head curiously out of his jacket, squeaky meows letting Ryan know that it had opinions on everything they passed.

‘Where the fuck were you?’ Michael demanded, as soon as Ryan got out of the elevator.

‘Hiding,’ Ryan said shortly, going straight to the kitchen.

'A phone call would have been nice,’ Geoff called from the couch. 'The heist was over hours ago, asshole.’

Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out the crushed remains of his smart phone, tossing it over the back of the couch. Geoff picked it up and scowled at the smashed glass.

‘These things are expensive!’ he said, as though they couldn’t afford to break a dozen phones a day for the next month with their take from the day’s heist.

'Yell at the guy who tried to take a baton to my ribs,’ Ryan said, opening the fridge and getting out the milk. It wasn’t really ideal for a cat, despite the claims of Tom and Jerry, but it would do for the moment.

He put half a cup of milk in the microwave for just long enough to take off the chill, and grabbed a syringe from the well-stocked first aid kit under the sink.

'Did you bring home a rat?’ Gavin asked, spotting a hint of black fur at Ryan’s throat and leaning on the breakfast bar to get a closer look.

Ryan didn’t answer him, just unzipped his bloody jacket and carefully pulled the kitten out of his shirt. 

Gavin’s squeal of 'Lookit the kitty!’ was almost the same pitch as the kitten’s indignant squeak at being moved. It squirmed weakly in his hands, and wasn’t impressed when he turned on the faucet and ran a shallow pool of warm water in the shiny sink.

'Shh, shh,’ he told it, bathing the struggling kitten carefully, rubbing his fingers through its short fur. The water ran off filthy, but the cat’s colour only got darker as he cleaned it. Under the dirt, its fur was a pure, coal black.

When he thought it was as clean as he’d get it by hand, he wrapped the kitten into a kitchen towel burrito and took it, the warm milk, and the syringe into the living room. He settled on the sectional couch well away from Geoff and filled a syringe with milk, offering it to the kitten.

Instinct kicked in at the first taste of food, and the kitten suckled voraciously, complaining every time Ryan had to refill the syringe.

'Where did you find it, Ryan?’ Gavin asked, sitting next to him and gazing at the tiny kitten with starry-eyed fascination.

'In the garbage where I was hiding,’ Ryan said. He didn’t mention the other two cats which hadn’t made it. Gavin was like a child sometimes, and Ryan didn’t like to wipe the wonder off his face in those moments. There was more than enough cold reality to go around.

'You can’t have a cat in the penthouse,’ Geoff said, watching the scene with significantly more cynical eyes. 'It’ll shit on the sofas.’

Ryan stared at him, eyes narrow, and said nothing.

Geoff coughed. Geoff Ramsey was not a man easily scared, but the Vagabond was known as his attack dog for a reason. Even without his mask, there was no one in Los Santos more intimidating than Ryan.

'If it touches anything of mine, I’ll turn it into a rug,’ Geoff said half heartedly.

Gavin looked horrified. 'You can’t hurt the kitty, Geoffrey!’

Ryan just snorted. He’d seen Geoff call off an entire operation to avoid the possibility of having to shoot guard dogs, and they were far more of a threat than an abandoned kitten.

'He couldn’t hurt a helpless animal if you paid him,’ he said flatly. 'The cat stays.’

Geoff scowled at the carpet and said nothing.

Ryan wasn’t wrong. In the morning, he took the cat to a vet for the proper shots and bought kitten food, and within a week it had charmed the entire crew. 

The vet's examination determined that the kitten was male, but Ryan made no attempt to name him, or if he did, he didn’t tell the crew his choice. Naturally, by the end of the first week, that was no longer good enough for certain members of the Fake AH.

One evening, when Jack and Geoff were out of town on business, the younger members of the crew gathered in the penthouse, enjoying a little quiet time together.

Michael was lying across one section of the couch, his head in Lindsay's lap as she lazily petted his curls. Ray was scrunched up on her other side, a hoodie-wrapped cocoon with a glowing DS at its centre.

Gavin was lying upside down, his feet up on the top of the other section of the couch, his face turning redder and redder as his head barely brushed the carpet. He was also clutching a DS, though he didn't seem to have much patience with his game, and he spent as much time staring at the wall as at his screen. 

Ryan couldn't tell if it was excess blood in his brain or just Gavin getting jittery. It had been a slow week since the last heist, and it wouldn't be unusual for the lad to be craving a bit of chaos.

Ryan was sitting on the couch as far from Gavin's randomly twitching sprawl as possible, his kitten curled into a tiny, dark spot on his lap, purring faintly as Ryan stroked over his fur with a couple of gentle fingers.

The quiet stretched, and inevitably the subject of the cat's name came up.

'What about Egg?' Gavin started, looking up at Ryan and scraping his head across the carpet, charging his wild hair with static.

'You can't call every cat Egg,' Michael replied, turning his head just far enough to scowl across at Gavin. 'What the fuck is your deal with that?'

'S'a good name for a cat,' Gavin said with an awkward, upside down shrug.

'No it fucking isn't!' Michael said, at the same moment as Ray piped up with 'If you don't speak English, maybe.'

'You're not calling my cat Egg,' Ryan said firmly. 'Or any other variation of your usual word-salad.'

'I've got to call him something, Ryan!' Gavin insisted.

'Call him Cat, then! Why is that so hard?'

'S boring!' Gavin protested.

'It’s a bit dull,' Lindsay agreed. 'He's a beautiful kitten, he should have a pretty name.'

'Blackie,' Michael suggested.

'Racist,' Ray replied, not even looking up from his game.

'Racist and boring,' Lindsay agreed. 'What about Midnight?'

Ryan huffed, not wanting to laugh out loud and jolt the kitten. 'How melodramatic.'

'Says the guy who won't go outside without his fucking skull mask!'

'Shadow,' Ray said.

'Still too dramatic. Look at him! He's a half-pound ball of fuzz.'

The kitten was growing rapidly, and Ryan was making sure that he got plenty to eat, but he was still tiny. Ryan could pick him up in one hand.

'He's not going to stay that small, though,' Lindsay pointed out. 'Think about when he's a merciless killer, terrorising the local rats.'

Ryan smiled at the thought.

'Point,' he conceded. 'I'm still not calling him Midnight.'

'Zorro,' Lindsay suggested.

Ryan hummed, but frowned. It wasn’t bad, as names went, but it wasn’t quite right either.

'Killer,' Ray put in, deadpan, and Ryan snorted.

'Egg,' Gavin insisted.

'We're not fucking calling him Egg!' Michael yelled before Ryan could.

'Flynt,' Lindsay said, at exactly the same time as Ray said 'Coal.'

They looked at each other, and grinned in unison.

'Flynt Coal?' they chorused.

Ryan didn't do a good enough job of hiding his smile, and Gavin latched onto the idea at once.

'Flynt Coal!' he declared. 'The deadliest kitty in Los Santos.'

'He sounds like a B-movie detective,' Ryan said, shaking his head ruefully. He could already tell it was going to stick no matter what he said, and it wasn’t a terrible name. He certainly preferred it to anything Gavin might have come up with.

'Weirdly right for a cat that lives with criminals, then,' Ray said, and Ryan finally laughed out loud.

Flynt Coal stirred at the movement, coming out of his tight ball and rolling onto his back. Tiny, needle-sharp claws flexed as he stretched out, then retracted into their soft sheaths again. He slit open one bright green eye, glaring at Ryan for interrupting his nap, then redoubled his purrs when Ryan stroked his belly. The cat had the most dangerous man in Los Santos wrapped around his tiny paw, and a name right out of a noir detective novel. Life was good.

~

Within a month any one of them would have killed for Flynt Coal. The cat always loved Ryan best, though, and whenever he returned from some grizzly business still wearing his mask, rather than running away, he wove lovingly around Ryan’s ankles and purred, recognising the terrible skull as the man who had saved him.

Ryan would happily murder half the city so long as he got to come back to his friends and his cat, but on one terrible night, death followed them all home. The penthouse was usually their fortress, protected by their reputations and Gavin's expert security measures. Once, just once, that wasn’t enough.

Geoff woke with a start when the howling intruder alarm went off, reaching for a gun before he even thought to turn on a light. He wasn’t the only one awake; he heard Michael shouting, doors opening, then a round of gunfire that made his blood run cold. It was no false alarm. They were under attack.

He flicked the safety off his pistol and padded over to his door, letting the faint city lights outside guide him.

The door burst inwards before he could open it, and he barely had to look at the black-clad, heavily-armed figure before he was shooting. It wasn’t one of his crew, and that was all he cared about.

He peeked carefully into the corridor, and before he could shoot the man he saw, Ray leaned out of his own room and dropped him with a precise headshot.

The Fake AH weren't kings of Los Santos for nothing, and even taken by surprise, they were deadly. It didn't take long to clear the penthouse, leaving a dozen black-clad bodies scattered on the pale carpet. Geoff spared a brief thought to be annoyed about that - shopping for carpet is the worst.

Gavin shut off the alarm and confirmed that there was no one else on the way up. They gathered in the living room, not a scratch on anyone, and Geoff thought for a moment that they were fine, thought that they'd won, until Ryan flicked on a lamp and made a low, wounded noise.

Flynt Coal was sprawled among the bullet-riddled couch cushions. It would have looked like his usual careless sleep, if not for his stillness, and the pool of red soaked into the fabric around him. Geoff's heart sank. 

Ryan fell heavily to his knees beside the couch and reached out, his fingertips barely brushing the bloodied black fur of his cat. Flynt Coal didn't move, would never wake from a nap and purr at his touch again, and Ryan let out a terrible, animal cry, his grief overruling his usual careful control. He picked up the limp, still-warm body and cradled it close, keening in agony. His hands stained red with blood, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

The whole crew watched him carefully rock Flynt Coal’s body, and Geoff knew they were all feeling the same tearing pain in their hearts. There wasn’t a single one of them who didn't love the cat.

Geoff dashed tears from his stubble-rough cheeks and turned to Gavin, seeing endless pain in the lad's green eyes.

'Find out who sent these assholes,' he commanded. 'I'm gonna burn their world down around them.'

Gavin cleared his throat and nodded. They both knew it wouldn't be enough. They'd already lost.

In the morning, Ryan wrapped Flynt Coal's tiny body in Jack's warmest cardigan, the one he loved to turn into a nest. The whole crew piled into two cars and drove out into the hills. The shovel in the trunk of the Roosevelt was put to a less nefarious use than usual, Michael channelling his grief and anger into digging a tiny, deep grave in the dusty soil. 

They buried Flynt Coal with more love and care than they had ever shown their fallen enemies, laying him down six feet deep so the scavengers couldn’t disturb him. Ryan was silent and blank faced through the entire process, already planning his vengeance on whoever had taken his cat from him. 

Geoff managed to keep his composure until Ray produced a single, perfect rose from his roof-top garden and laid it on the tiny grave, but then his stoicism failed and tears poured unchecked down his face.


	2. Chapter 2

They tracked the intruders to an upstart gang with unusually good technical skills. Ryan made a particular effort to ensure that none of them died well, and he had an audience for most of his work. 

When tortured men cried out to Gavin and Lindsay, the soft-handed hacker and the young, smiling woman, in hopes of mercy they found only impassive stares. Lindsay gladly handed over the blowtorch when Ryan asked for it. Both of them will forever care more about cats than people.

When it was finally done, the grim remains strung up in the city in warning, Ryan went back to the penthouse. 

He scrubbed away the blood and pain, dressing in soft sweats and a t-shirt in place of his usual leather-jacket uniform. He trod barefoot over thick new carpets that still smelled of wool and sharp blue dye, and sat on the new couch, staring out over the city. 

Days upon days of violence had done nothing to make him feel better. He had barely spoken to anyone since the night raid, and in his head, his own agonised keening had mingled with the screams of his victims.

The others were out, the penthouse deserted and silent, so when he heard the elevator stop on their floor he assumed someone was coming home. 

However, the doors didn’t open, and after a minute he heard a low scratching sound coming from inside. Ryan was immediately on alert. His first thought was that there was about to be a new attack, but there should be no one left alive who was capable of getting into their home. 

He readied his pistol, crept over to the elevator and leaned against the wall beside it, poised for violence. He pressed the button, and the doors swished open.

When no one came barrelling out, he dared to peek round the corner. A familiar meow greeted him, and before he understood what was happening, a small, furry shape was winding around his bare ankles, purring fit to burst.

Ryan barely remembered to flick on the safety before he dropped his gun, hands gone numb with shock.

The cat was filthy, dusty brown soil and darker dried blood flaking off its black coat in a tiny storm, but he knew it all the same. Flynt Coal was alive.

He bent down and picked up the cat, finding him warm and solid, as eager to cuddle into Ryan's chest as ever he was. The living cat could not have felt more different from the cold form he had buried, and Ryan wondered suddenly if he had lost his mind, somewhere in those blood-stained days.

Flynt Coal nuzzled against his neck, rubbing his chin over Ryan's skin to leave his claiming scent behind, and Ryan could only stand there and let him, hands petting through dusty fur on pure instinct as his mind shut down.

Eventually, plaintive mewing and wriggling got his attention, and he let Flynt Coal jump down. The cat went straight to the kitchen, nosing around the floor where his food bowls ought to be, and Ryan started moving out of sheer habit.

No one had got around to throwing anything away, avoiding the task out of grief and denial, and there were still pouches of food in the cupboard. Ryan pulled down familiar dishes and fed the cat. It only made sense that he would be hungry. They had buried Flynt Coal miles from the penthouse, and it would have been a long walk home.

While Flynt Coal had his face happily buried in fish, Ryan pet down his sides, searching for some trace of the terrible bullet wounds he knew were there before. He found nothing, not even a scar. 

He sat back on his heels and pulled out his phone.

>>Get home now. Wacky things happening.

He sent the text to all the penthouse residents, needing other eyes, other minds, to confirm that he wasn't any crazier than usual. He wet down a kitchen towel and wiped off the worst of the old blood and dirt, turning it into a game when Flynt Coal was sated enough to turn and try to grab the towel away.

He was still on the floor of the kitchen, wrestling with the cat, when the others got home.

Lindsay and Michael were first, bursting in on high alert, but when they saw Ryan they relaxed.

'Way to cause a panic, asshole,' Michael said, scowling.

Lindsay made a beeline for the cat, recognition in her wide eyes.

'Oh my god,' she said, when Flynt Coal stalked away from Ryan and wound around her ankles, mewing delightedly.

'It's him, right?' Ryan said, sounding a little desperate.

'Oh my god,' Lindsay said again, scooping up the cat and staring at him. There was still dirt in his fur and caked around his claws, clear signs that he was buried and dug his way out. 

'This is impossible.'

'What the fuck?' Michael asked, petting Flynt Coal's head. 'Are you fucking kidding me?'

'There are no wounds. No scars. He just showed up in the elevator covered in dirt and old blood,' Ryan explained. 'Tell me I'm not crazy here.'

'It's him,' Lindsay agreed immediately. 'Don't ask me how, but it's definitely him. Look at how he's acting. He knows us.'

With Lindsay's help, Ryan got the cat properly clean, and by the time Jack, Ray, Geoff and Gavin got home, Ryan was sitting on the couch with a black ball of fluff asleep on his lap.

'You got a new cat,' Gavin said, as soon as he walked in. He sounded devastated, as though trying to replace Flynt Coal so quickly was the worst kind of betrayal. Ryan would have agreed with him, if that was what had actually happened.

'No, same cat,' he said, and couldn’t restrain his grin.

'What?'

Ryan beckoned Gavin over, and when Gavin cautiously touched Flynt Coal's fur, the cat stirred at his familiar scent. He made a contented noise and rolled over, baring his belly for Gavin to stroke, just as he always had.

'Hello kitty,' Gavin said, sounding awed, and Flynt Coal merped in response.

'How the fuck?' Geoff asked, dropping into his chair like a puppet with cut strings.

Ryan retold the tale, and all of them stared in wonder at the cat. None of them had any explanation. To return from apparent death would be strange enough, but the lack of any wounds at all was doubly wondrous.

That night, and the first few days afterwards, none of them could leave Flynt Coal alone, showering their miraculous cat with affection. Flynt Coal was, of course, delighted, but there was never any indication that he was any different than before.

Eventually, they chalked it up to a miracle, a mystery that would never be solved, but for which all of them were grateful. It would have ended there, just one strange occurrence in lives full of weirdness, except four months later Michael got shot.

It was a car-jacking gone wrong, a stupid, meaningless death. Instead of handing over the car, the driver pulled a sawn-off shotgun and blasted Michael full in the face. 

Jack was with him, and she dragged his body away, cursing and crying, laying him down in an alley after the shooter had driven away. There was nothing to be done. There wasn’t enough of Michael's head left for her to even hope.

She called Geoff, asking for a pickup with her voice shaking. Geoff knew there was something wrong, and pressed her for details, and when she told him that Michael was gone he fell silent.

'I'll be there in half an hour,' he said hollowly, and hung up.

Jack sat in the stinking alley and stared at the ruined remains of Michael's face, sick to her stomach but unable to look away.

By the time Geoff arrived, pulling up in an unmarked van, she had noticed something odd.

Geoff got out, holding a body-bag in shaking hands, but when he went to lay it out beside Michael, Jack stopped him.

'Wait,' she said. 'Don't bag him yet.'

Geoff glared at her like she was sick, unwilling to look at his dead friend for any longer than he must.

'I've been watching, and his brain is growing,' Jack explained. 'I'm not sure he's dead.'

'He sure as fuck looks dead,' Geoff said, voice cracking.

'So did Flynt Coal.'

That got Geoff to pay attention, and they both watched silently, waiting for a miracle. Half an hour later, Geoff was convinced. Michael's skull and brain were definitely re-growing. It was going to take a while, but it looked like he was coming back.

'Let's take him home,' Geoff suggested. 'Better to wait there than here.'

They shuffled Michael on to the body-bag and lifted him into the back of the van, and Jack drove carefully all the way back to their building, not wanting to jostle Michael and risk interrupting whatever strange wonder was working on his corpse.

They carried him into the penthouse, earning a screech of horror from Gavin.

'What the fuck?' Ray demanded, throwing his controller aside and covering his face in despair as they laid the open body-bag on the floor of the living room.

'Oh, Michael,' Gavin said brokenly, staring down at his boi. Michael's face was still a ruin, but Jack knew it was worlds better than before.

'We think he's coming back,' Jack assured them. 'Wait, and you'll see his face growing.'

Gavin retched at the idea of watching his friend's tissue slowly regrow, but even he had to admit that it was infinitely preferable to Michael being permanently dead.

Six hours later, Michael opened his eyes. He rolled onto his side and coughed, startling the hell out of the gathered crew.

Lindsay slid off the couch and dropped to her knees, drawing him up into a hug, babbling grateful nonsense in his ear.

Michael seemed disorientated, but he latched on to her, holding tight to her familiar warmth.

'What the fuck was that?' he asked, a few minutes later, easing away from Lindsay enough to look around.

'You tried to take a guy's car and he blew your head off,' Jack said.

'How am I not dead?'

'We don't know, buddy, but we're pretty fucking happy about it,' Geoff said. He offered Michael a cold beer, and the lad accepted it, taking a long swallow.

Flynt Coal jumped down off the couch and put his paws up on Michael's blood-stained chest, purring like an engine.

'You did something,' Michael said to the cat, squinting suspiciously at him. 'You came back, and now I can't die either?'

Flynt Coal only purred louder, rubbing his face into Michael's bloody shirt.

'Thanks,' Michael said, and only felt a little silly for it. Clearly, there were weirder things at work than talking to a cat.

'Do we all come back?' Jack wondered aloud.

Ryan drew a pistol from under his jacket without hesitation.

'We can find out?' he suggested, already taking aim at Gavin.

Gavin squawked and rolled over the back of the couch.

'No shooting people in the penthouse!' Geoff said, before Ryan could pull the trigger. None of them were entirely sure whether he really meant to or not. 'We'll test it somewhere else.'

They ran extensive tests over the next few weeks. The first death was the hardest for each of them, and took the longest for them to return from. The first time, they stayed dead for hours, slowly healing, and woke disorientated. 

After that, it took only a few minutes for them to heal and come gasping back to life. It was as though there was something in their bodies which had to be activated that first time, and which worked more efficiently afterwards. Beyond that observation, not even Ryan could come up with anything remotely scientific behind the process.

They tried shooting, drowning, burning, hanging, and running each other over, and eventually stopped after the grim process of watching Lindsay die by slow poison disturbed them enough to halt their experiments for a while. 

Though many deaths were horribly painful, none of them ever stuck. However it had happened, the core members of the Fake AH Crew, and their cat, were apparently immortal. None of them were sure yet if they were still ageing, but none of them got sick, and no violent form of death would keep them down.

Privately, Ryan thought back to the night he had found Flynt Coal, and the eager way the tiny kitten had licked the blood on his hands, and knew that the cat was the one who started it all. Ryan had cared for a helpless creature, loved him and mourned him, avenged his death, and something deemed his actions worthy of reward.


End file.
